


Steady Light

by NYCScribbler



Category: New York City (Anthropomorfic)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, anthropomorfic - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/pseuds/NYCScribbler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the existence of the Chrysler Building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warriorpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/gifts).



> TW: there's a brief reference to the Twin Towers.

We have been friends a long time, the chameleon and I. He admires my ornate gargoyles and elegant spire from afar, the flicker of his colored lights telling me of the world and his state of mind. On nights where he blazes in blue brilliance or shines in shimmering scarlet, I envy him his flexibility of expression. Yet I do not think I would trade my steady burning white for his ever-changing colors. There are times when an old edifice such as myself prefers to present a single simple face.

The afternoon sun caresses my spire, and I luxuriate in the warmth, even as I throw the light back in a thousand dazzling directions, reflections bouncing from my polished steel and my windows. I think this would be my favorite time if I stood alone, with no company high above the streets. But in this city, one is never alone.

The skies above the city buzz now, crowded with the others who followed us, reaching for impossible heights, higher and ever higher. The bustling bank settles upon the rumbling of his trains, and every night blinks a greeting to his lonesome cousin across the river, a stranger in a low-rise land. The twins shimmer uptown, gleaming mirrors that draw the people towards them. Another pair of twins to the south- but it is too sad to speak of those who are fallen, and too soon to speak of their successors, though the elder already twists to reach higher than ever before. He does not have his voice yet- these things take time, of course. A soul large enough to suffuse one of us takes years to grow from the seeds of those who raised us up, nurtured by the immeasurably tiny people who call us home as they come and go and leave something of themselves behind.

These tiny, bustling people who fill us- they give us animation, and they have fumbled their way to the correct answer, reaching like bare girders as they stretch for their first grasp of the sky, and yet they do not know us as completely as they believe they do. They imagine that my oldest and nearest friend and I are rivals, when nothing could be further from the truth. Before he came to be, my blocks were lonesome and few pierced the highest skies. Those others- in those early years, our lights were dim and we hardly knew one another. Only the faintest sense of my kin drifted uptown to me, and I suppose they knew less of me than I did then. A short time- such a short time it was, even in the way our little people reckon it, before the chameleon raised his spire to the sky, and yet it feels longer in my memory than all the years after.

Night falls in the city, and our lights come on. Like great jeweled strings now, I see the bridges in the distance, friends both old and new. The stately stone bridge was here long before I ever was, though only when the tiny people strung lights upon her cables did she speak to us. She glitters in the night, Lady Brooklyn and her sisters, and they tell us of the travelers who have passed by them on foot and by car and by train.

Every night, as always, their tales excite and terrify me at the same time. To travel... to be not bound to a single place... no, the idea is too much. I am rooted deep in the rock and earth of my city, feeling its rumbling heart in my beams and the breath of its wind against my spire. I would not change that if I could. I would not exchange permanent stability for temporary freedom. This is the place where I belong, nestled among my little cousins and brothers, feeling them murmur of the people who scurry so impossibly fast through them and around them.

They do not scurry so much around me. They stop and stare, sometimes, before walking on. Some of them almost seem to understand what it is to be part of the city, nearly as immutable as the concrete and stone of the old island. Perhaps they sense that there is more to a building than polished steel and blank windows. But they move, and they are unrooted, and even those who seem as if they would understand eventually speed away. And that too is part of the rhythm and flow.

The night deepens, and I can feel the sizzle of power coursing through my electrical system as it dies down on my lower levels and flares ever stronger at my spire. The chameleon, mere infinite blocks away, flickers his green at me with some amusement, and the tiny dot of red at my very tip blinks in answer. The great black slab to the east flashes condescension at my maudlin mood, but him I ignore. He is too far below me to see my mood.

We are alone now, we who soar over the city. The taxis so far below bleat their horns and flash red lights at red lights. Office buildings, shuttered and dark, subside into a low doze, waiting dully for the morning when their people return. Apartment buildings settle in for the night with sleepy chatter. Perhaps some of them across the river, lost in the distant night, reach for the stars and look to their kindred, but they are too far from the glow of the heart of the city. The lower strata are quiescent, if not quiet. High above them, we live and watch each other through the lights.

Through the night, we share our thoughts, share our secrets, and grow closer even as we remain physically distant, landmarks and waystations for those who wander rootless upon the city’s streets. The young ones, with their fresh modern names of publisher's steel and lead, or commerce's gold and silver, blink quietly, as if bemused by how they came to be. My old friends are familiar shapes at my shoulders, level with my gargoyles from where I stand firm, or shrunken by the illusion of perspective in the distance. This is one of the flaws learned from my people, this illusion of distance. We are all part of the same city, melded to the same bedrock, our foundations laid on the same island. The roads that abut us tie us together, and the wires and cables beneath the ground link us to one another. We are here, and here we remain.

My old friend, the chameleon with his changing colors, dims his lights. The green wavers before winking out completely, leaving him a stepped silhouette against the clouded sky. Someday, I may ask him what he finds so funny, but for now, I settle into my foundation. What little heat there has been escapes me now as the cool of the night kisses my steel. Another morning will come, and another night, and another morning, and so the cycle turns.

**Author's Note:**

> I love this city. I love being able to write this city. I couldn't quite ship them, so have some scenery porn instead:
> 
> [the chameleon himself](http://www.california-tour.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/EmpireStateChristmas_shutterstock_superresized-300x251.jpg)
> 
> [our narrator, the chameleon, and the great black slab](http://wirednewyork.com/images/skyscrapers/chrysler-building/empire_chrysler_trump_night_s.jpg)
> 
> [the bank](http://andrewprokos.com/d/citicorp-tower-night?g2_itemId=74) and [his cousin](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Citicorp_Building_by_David_Shankbone.jpg/220px-Citicorp_Building_by_David_Shankbone.jpg)
> 
> [the twins](http://wirednewyork.com/aol/images/time_warner_center_crown_s.jpg)
> 
> [the bb twins, eventually](http://thesmokingnun.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/08marsh-popup.jpg?w=341&h=400) and the [older of the two](http://images.metroscenes.com/2012/new-york-city-may-2012/1282/one_world_trade_center_rises_with_the_world_financial_center_at_night/)
> 
> [Lady Brooklyn and her sisters](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9591)
> 
> [steel](http://www.aluzinarte.es/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/The-New-York-Times-Building.-NYC-USA.jpg) and [lead](http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID-conde-nast-sunrise.jpg)
> 
> [gold and silver](http://newyork.construction.com/images/2008/11_Bank-of-America-Night.jpg)
> 
> [and](http://fastangel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/new-york-city-skyline-wallpaper-1920x1080.jpg) [some](http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&docid=eBMc9_EUd8rjOM&tbnid=17lHQAnNJ3W_QM:&ved=0CAUQjBw4HA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fimg%2F2009%2F03%2F28%2Falg_skyline.jpg&ei=yiGpUofgLeHhygHlsoCoBA&psig=AFQjCNG9GIgLsM-Iz-9il3eW3G1BiTaBVQ&ust=1386902346818285) [general](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/New_York_Midtown_Skyline_at_night_-_Jan_2006_edit1.jpg) [scenery](http://famouswonders.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/new-york-skyline-at-night.jpg) [porn](http://mattschiavenza.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/New-York-Skyline-Night-Fixed.jpg)


End file.
